Salon: Verbivore

B y  R I C H A R D  L E D E R E R

HENRY David Thoreau, who wrote "Walden," helped runaway slaves escape to Canada and became one of the first Americans to speak in defense of John Brown. When Thoreau spent a day in jail for acting on the dictates of his conscience, he was visited by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson asked, "Henry, why are you here?"

Thoreau answered, "Waldo, why are you not here?"

Within the brief compass of a biographical incident we can sometimes catch and crystallize the essence of a person's character. Here are some of my favorite anecdotes about American authors, each of whom you are asked to identify:

1. President Abraham Lincoln took this abolitionist author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the hand and said, "So this is the little lady who made this big war."

2. Born a slave in Maryland and escaping in 1838, this powerful orator became the leading African American in the abolitionist movement. He recruited black soldiers to fight in the Civil War and ultimately produced three autobiographies.

3. Only seven of this New England woman's poems were published during her lifetime, and she left instructions that all of the manuscripts be destroyed. Today she is one of the most widely read and influential American poets of the 19th century.

4. As a young cadet, this American writer was expelled from West Point for reporting to a march wearing nothing but white gloves.

5. and 6. When a popular Jazz Age American novelist remarked to another famous writer that, "The rich are very different from you and me," the latter replied, "Yes, they have more money." Name the two authors.

7. This American poet was asked to compose a poem and read it at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. When the sun's glare prevented him from reading the poem at the occasion, he instead recited "The Gift Outright" from memory.

Answers

1. Harriet Beecher Stowe
2. Frederick Douglass
3. Emily Dickinson
4. Edgar Allan Poe
5. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and 6. Ernest Hemingway
7. Robert Frost

Now try the Verbivore's Challenge. The first reader to identify each of the American authors described below will win a $25 gift certificate to Borders Books and Music.

1. This reclusive American writer was depicted in W. P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe." When the subject threatened to sue, he was replaced in the film version, titled "Field of Dreams," by a fictitious writer named Terrence Mann, who was portrayed by James Earl Jones.

2. This writer, critic and humorist once arrived simultaneously at a narrow doorway with the playwright, journalist and politician Clare Boothe Luce.

"Age before beauty," said Mrs. Luce, stepping aside.

"Pearls before swine," purred our writer as she glided through the doorway.

3. When he was a young busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, this American poet left a packet of his poems next to the poet Vachel Lindsay's plate. Lindsay helped to launch the young man's career, and the busboy became the leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

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The winner of the last Verbivore Challenge was Robert Hooker, who correctly guessed the following:

1. Identify the president who observed, "It's a damn small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."

Andrew Jackson, who was often accused of being illiterate.

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of such American classics as "The Scarlet Letter," died on a canoe trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, accompanied by which president?

Franklin Pierce

3. The Chicago Times review of a presidential speech had this to say: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterances of the man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the United States."

Who was the president and what was the speech?

Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address

4. Identify the president in the following conversation:

PRESIDENT'S WIFE: I'm sorry I missed the sermon. What was it about?
PRESIDENT: Sin.
WIFE: What did the minister say about it?
PRESIDENT: He was against it.

Calvin Coolidge

5. After whom was the Baby Ruth candy bar named?

Not after baseball slugger Babe Ruth, as is commonly assumed, but after the daughter of president Grover Cleveland.

6. With what president is this bit of doggerel associated?:

Ma! Ma!
Where's my pa?
Gone to the White House --
Ha! Ha! Ha!

Grover Cleveland. When Cleveland was a bachelor, a young widow and lady friend, Maria Halpin, conceived and bore a son. Cleveland assumed full responsibility, and the poem became widely circulated during Cleveland's run for the presidency.

7. Being from the Midwest, this president often talked to farm groups. Whenever he held forth about fertilizer, he used the word manure, much to the embarrassment of his support staff. When the public relations people went to his wife to ask her help in getting the president to stop using the offending word, she sighed, "You'd be amazed how long it took me to get [him] to start using manure."

Identify that president.

Harry S Truman

Language expert Richard Lederer's latest book is "Pun and Games," wordplay for kids. He comments on language for National Public Radio and other radio stations and is the Grammar Grappler for Writer's Digest. He can be reached at rlederer@tiac.net. Visit the newly-erected Verbivore web site at http://www.tiac.net/users/rlederer/index.htm

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